Yearly archive for 2008

The purpose of any interview is simple: to figure out whether a candidate can do the job profitably. Everything else is ancillary — or fluff.

A smart interview is not an interrogation. It’s not a series of canned questions or a set of scripted tests that have been ginned up by HR. You know the drill: the Top 10 Stupid Interview Questions for managers who don’t know how to talk shop. If you could be any animal, what animal would you be? Why are manhole covers round? What’s your greatest weakness? Where do you see yourself in five years?

An interview should be a roll-up-your-sleeves, hands-on working meeting between you and the candidate, where all of the focus is on the job. Think of the interview as the candidate’s first day at work, with the only question that matters being this: “What’s your business plan for doing this job?”

To successfully answer that, the candidate must first demonstrate an understanding of the company’s problems, challenges, and goals — not an easy thing to do. But since you want to make a great hire — and get back to your own job–, why don’t you help the best candidate succeed? Isn’t that what you’d do for any one of your employees after you give them an assignment? You want them to succeed. Why do the dopey interview dance?

A week before the interview, call up the candidate. (If HR warns you not to, remind them who runs your department.) Provide some instructions and advice:

“We want you to show us how you’re going to do this job. That’s going to take a lot of homework. I suggest that you read through these pages on our web site, review these publications from our marketing and investor-relations departments, and speak with these three people on my team. When you’re done, you should have something useful to tell us.”

This will eliminate 9 out of 10 candidates. Yah, tell your HR department to suck rocks. You’re not interested in tons of resumes, lots of candidates, and plenty of interviews. The fewer, the better. This is not a numbers game. Anyone without the motivation to do the job to win the job isn’t worth considering. Only those who really want the job will do the work to research the job. Everyone else is a tire-kicker who’s wasting your time.

In the interview, you should expect (or hope) to hear the most compelling question that any candidate can ask:

“Would you like me to show how your company will profit from hiring me?”

It’s no surprise. It’s the same question you’re asking, if you behave like your own job matters, and that hiring great people matters is a manager’s #1 job. The candidate should be prepared to do the job in the interview. That means walking up to the whiteboard and outlining the steps he or she would take to solve your company’s problems. The numbers might be off, but the candidate should be able to defend them intelligently.

If the candidate reveals an understanding of your culture and competitors — and lays out a plan of attack to solve your problems and add profit to your bottom line — you have some compelling reasons to make the hire.

If you trust only a candidate’s references, credentials, resume, or test results, you won’t know whether the candidate can do the job. Don’t talk around the job; get on it.

There’s a wildly-successful TV show that will pit your intelligence against that of 5th graders. I’ll tell you, when it first came out I said it would flop — but the number of adults who fail to keep up with 5th graders is a little frightening. So is the nervous laughter from the audience…

Which leads me to ask, is your work ethic worthy of a 15-year-old? The Evil HR Lady offers young burger-flippers simple advice on How to Avoid Being Fired.

I smirked at some of her suggestions, but then I realized something. If I didn’t learn everything I needed to know in kindergarten, the rest of my work-world savvy was cultivated by a job I had in a diner when I was 15. Simple, boiled-down advice like this has little flavor but, like comfort food, it will take you a long way.

The Evil HR Lady’s suggestions for success at work aren’t just for kids, so pay attention. My favorite is this gem: “Work while you are there.”

Now, there’s something to think about while calculating your value to an employer. Woody Allen was wrong: 90% of success is not “just showing up.” It’s about doing the work. Getting the job done. Producing what you’re supposed to produce. Few 15-year-olds get that, but their bosses grind it into them. Don’t let us forget it, especially in a job interview, when the employer asks, “Why do you want this job?” The answer is not, “So I can show up… and get paid.” The answer is… well, you figure it out.

Remember that Woody Allen is a comedian. While you laugh at humanity’s foibles, he gets paid. When your name has the value that his does, you might get paid just for showing up and standing around. Do what you say you’re going to do. Do what the employer expects. Work while you are there.

Ask The Headhunter is loaded with critiques about resume writers, Human Resources, career counselors, career coaches, headhunters, and every denizen of the career industry — including extreme career consulting, a.k.a., executive marketing. It’s simple: the industry lends itself to quacks and quick-buck artists. And there are a lot of them. But there are a lot of good practitioners, too. You just need to know the difference.

Nah, I’m not going to try and show you how to figure it out. I get taken by surprise myself sometimes, thinking someone’s a quack, and they turn out to be very insightful and helpful. All I can suggest is, check their references. (Yah, check their references! Turnabout is fair play. And smart.) Talk to their clients. Talk to companies who know them. Know who you’re working with.

(Okay, here’s one tip. Like headhunters, really good counselors know they’re operating in a field full of jargon and tools and techniques that are sometimes over the top. They approach their black art with a bit of black humor. They poke and prod before they administer their potions, and they might turn their clients upside down and shake them out to get a better look. They’re fun to work with. No fun, no dice.)

Do employers owe you feedback after a job interview? Jeez Louise. Could job hunters be more brainwashed? How could anyone even ask that question? You might as well ask, Does a job hunter owe an employer answers during a job interview?

Nah, let’s all just waste one another’s time and agree that our time is worthless and rude behavior is par for the course.

It’s not. And it’s not. An employer owes you candid, detailed feedback after a job interview because it’s the right thing to do. But a well-intentioned reader demonstrates just how pervasive the brainwashing is, and how loopy this feedback failure has become:

I am a subscriber to your e-mail newsletter and I wanted to give you some feedback. I disagree with the recent advice you gave in a column about, “Do I deserve feedback after the interview?”

The person who wrote to you was obsessing because they didn’t get feedback from a single interview. Why? This is par for the course. You advised the job hunter to contact the hiring manager to talk more about the job, and then to casually press for feedback about why he wasn’t hired. Then you suggested he go over the manager’s head to talk to his boss. This may just make the guy appear to be difficult to deal with.

It is much worse when you go on one, two, or even three interviews, spend a day or two, take vacation time off work, and don’t get feedback. From what I’ve heard, companies don’t want any liability surrounding providing feedback after an interview. I have never gotten any such feedback and I have interviewed with lots of companies. It is just part of the competitive interviewing world and people should just accept it.

You do have a point — not getting feedback after a job interview is routine. But look more closely at what you’re saying: “…companies don’t want any liability surrounding providing feedback after an interview.”

Smart job hunting requires picking good target companies carefully. Why apply for jobs at lousy companies? Life’s too short. It’s why I tell people There aren’t 400 jobs for you. At best, there might be a small handful. Don’t just look for a job. It’s far better to doggedly pursue four, five or six right companies than to shotgun the job market and go after every wrong company out there — just because the job boards let you.

This reader has a very, very smart approach to checking out companies. Yep, he checks a company’s references, and he does it like no one else I’ve ever seen. He starts by using the most credible references he can think of: church ministers. This gives a whole new meaning to being blessed…

I couldn’t agree more with your strong advice to carefully research a company’s reputation, in your article Peeling The Offer. I’d like to share an experience I had that illustrates just how important this is.

I applied for a management position and made it through four phone interviews and then a site visit where I was interviewed by three people. Following the interviews I felt that I had a very good shot at the job but I had some very bad feelings about the company, including the fact it had 150% staff turnover and all supervisors and managers had less than one year on the job. I would have been responsible for all new-hire training and it looked like I was going to be chasing a moving target even before I started to ask why the turnover rate was so high. I left the interview and stopped at a local sporting goods store on my way out of town. I mentioned to the store owner that I was in town for a job interview. Without hesitation the store owner said, “You don’t want to work there. That place is a mess.”

The next day I set up meetings with the ministers of the two largest churches in town. Ministers know a community. I asked both men about the reputation of the employer. I said I would appreciate their wisdom, advice and assistance and promised to keep their comments in the strictest confidence. One declined to say much, other than to agree that the company had a very high turn over rate. I felt that his reply was significant for what he did not say. He did not say it was a good place to work or that I would be happy working there. The second minister was much more vocal. He said that a number of his parishoners worked at the company and absolutely hated their jobs. He said the plant manager was extremely difficult to work for, the accident rate appeared to be very high, and working conditions and benefits for the hourly workers were very poor. Even though I would have received better benefits as a manager, I have major issues with a company that treats its hourly people like dirt.

I decided that if two local ministers – men of decent reputation and good education – couldn’t say anything good about an employer, I certainly didn’t want to work there. So I sent an e-mail off to the corporate recruiter with a “Thanks, but no thanks” message. I’m still looking, but I can sleep at night.

References on a company are key. References can save you time, trouble, and pain. But this story takes it up a notch: If you want useful references, go to credible references. Ministers. I love it.

I needed a job. And it was before I knew about Ask the Headhunter – though, as you will see, it made be realize how smart you are when I finally did start reading your columns.

Anyway, I was doing the shotgun thing – sending resumes here, there and everywhere, replying to want-ads, calling old co-workers, even people I didn’t really know. I interviewed one morning with a guy at a contracting firm (call him Mr. M.) who had a lot of people at a large manufacturing company in my city. I knew I wasn’t quite qualified, but I also knew I could learn what I needed to fairly quickly.

But, this guy was having none of that. He proceeded to tell my how weak my resumé was and how extremely uninteresting I was to him. To put it mildly, he could have been a lot nicer. But, I had confidence in my worth. I just shrugged it off and kept looking. I found a short-term contracting gig, and eventually made it to Big Bank with a good, permanent job (where I still work).

Some time later, a funny thing happened. We needed to hire a contractor. My boss handed me two resumés to see what I thought. And, wonder of wonders, one of them was Mr. M’s. (Remember him?) I rejected him immediately. He never knew that, of course, but it does illustrate what can happen. It’s a small world – and an even smaller town.

Now, just so you know, I was honest with my boss. I told her that his qualifications were fine. I also told her the story of the interview. And she said that as important as technical qualifications are, she did not want anyone working for her who would treat people that way. A lesson for all of us.

Yah, corny: What goes around, comes around. It’s a small world. We reap what we sow. You never know who you’ll run into again.

Perhaps Mr. M., brusque though he was, had good reasons for not hiring this reader. But, it seems our reader had good reasons for not hiring Mr. M.

I’ve chided companies for using mundane recruiting methods and salary scales that result in hiring people on the fat part of the bell curve. Management guru Tom Peters suggests recruiting and hiring weirdos — people on the thin, leading edge of the curve; people who will upset the balance at your company and take you in new directions. Those people cost money — lots of money — because they’re (surprise!) on the leading edge of the curve.

Some companies use headhunters to recruit good people — for whatever reason: their HR department can’t do it well; they like to spend money; they like an outsider’s perspective; they like the networks that good headhunters maintain.

But the same bell-curve problem exists when a company hires a headhunter: You hire the best — out on the edge of the curve — or you use a mediocre headhunter to save money (and time, if you’re too lazy to go find the best). The problem is exactly the same: you’re buying mediocrity. Read more →

Women just keep causing trouble. You can’t figure them out, no matter how much you try. They just wanna have fun. They want a degree. They want a good job. They want respect. They want to earn as much as men. They want kids. They want to break the glass ceiling. They want corporate life to not suck. They want power. They want mentoring. They want time for their families. They want men who make a lot of money so they can hang loose. They want to go back to good jobs after having kids. They want equal treatment. They can’t stand stupid men. They can’t stand stupid women. They cause a lotta trouble. Jiminy, you can’t live with ’em and you can’t… make sense of the corporate world when you realize women are the canaries in the corporate coal mine, and we’re all being gassed…

Every couple of years somebody (usually a woman) does a study that shows women are leaving the corporate world for some reason. Duh.

Computerworld recently reported on the Athena Factor, a Harvard study about women at work. Even better, after readers chimed in, Computerworld editor Don Tennant laid into Sylvia Ann Hewlett’s study in an article titled, The Bigger Question. (Kudos, Don.) And, jumpin’ Jehosophat, I was taken back to the same topic — different studies, different names, same women — that I covered in Are Maverick Women to Blame? a few years ago.

Gratuitous Harvard studies with gratuitous conclusions offered by gratuitous Female Spokespersons For The Fair Sex are about as useful as Crap Written by Men to Justify Corporate Crap. Gimme a break.

What’s the most fun stuff in Tennant’s article and in Maverick Women Fire Back? The comments from women writing in: the canaries in the coal mine. Except these canaries flew the coop.

James Maguire at Datamation (the oldest IT publication this side of a PDP-11 manual) pointed me to glassdoor.com and asked what I think of this new web site that gathers and reports salary information in the information technology industry. His article is a fun read: IT Salaries: Glassdoor Reveals Tech Pay Figures.

This web site — funded by Benchmark Capital and run by guys from places like Expedia who oughta know better — collects tech-industry salary information from anyone who submits it. Maguire didn’t tell me this, but I heard a rumor that every morning a dog appears at glassdoor.com with a note in its mouth, and is promptly fed, stroked, and sent back out to fetch more data…

Come on, guys. This is ridiculous. But I’ll bite. Having information about who’s earning what at which companies could be useful, as long as you don’t let it effectively cap your own worth. Of course, glassdoor.com needs to make it over one big hurdle: Is the salary information it publishes legit?

Maguire asks this one question every which way, and my hat is off to the guy for keeping a straight face. And here’s a sample of the answers he got:

“We’ve got a bunch of technical and procedural mechanisms to vet the data.” When pressed, one of the founders demurs, “We’re not really talking about the specifics that we’re using.” (Cough-cough.)

Even Ambrose Bierce, owner of a recipe once more closely guarded than the formula for Coca Cola, revealed more than that, in Oil of Dog.

This week’s Ask The Headhunter Newsletter generated a lot of sharp comments via e-mail, as well as many requests that I post it on the blog. I’m glad to oblige. (The newsletter is free, but it’s not archived online, so only subscribers receive it.)

A reader’s story:

I’ve applied for a job in the $80K-$90K range. I’ve learned that the company in question had high turnover in the past few years because they took advantage of their employees. Now, they claim to have changed. But, in a phone interview, I was told the job required a 50-70 hour work week, plus on-call duties for some weekends. I’m scheduled for a 3.5-hour interview, and I just received the e-mail below from the recruiter. This is the first time I have ever heard of something like this, and I have to say makes me feel uneasy.

“I wanted to give you a heads-up on something, should you receive a job offer from XYZ company. I know that you have not received an offer YET, but I do like to let all of my XYZ candidates know about this during their interviewing process.

“XYZ company has all of their new employees sign an agreement to stay for at least 18 months. This is because of the importance of their projects and contracts and because of the investment from their part with new employees and training and so on. They have everyone sign an agreement to stay for at least 18 months. If you do decide to leave before then, you are required to pay a small percentage of the fee that they paid to the recruiter for your hiring. The percentage lessens each month and the longer that you stay with them, the less you have to pay if you decide to leave. Unfortunately, this is becoming more common among employers.

“However, our recruiting firm has our own guarantee and we will cover you up to two months (60 days). Therefore, if you happen to decide to leave before your 60 days is up, then you are not required to pay anything. Does that make sense? The HR manager will discuss all of these details IF they decide to extend an offer to you. This is usually not a problem for my candidates, as most people will not accept an offer if they do not plan on staying for at least 18 months, and you still have that 60 day period that my firm covers.”

Have you ever heard of such a requirement before accepting a job offer? This does not sound very good to me.